This web page contains a collection of articles written by me, and published in Sky and Telescope magazine, Astronomy magazine, and others. Virtually all of the questions that you may have about cosmology can be answered by reading one or another of these essays. I will eventually provide links to these essays so you can easily read these basic articles in cosmology. Meanwhile, several of my blog essays cover these topics too!

Books:

Patterns in the Void:Why nothing is important, is now out-of-print and explained some of the exciting, and troubling, aspects of modern cosmology.

My new book Exploring Quantum Space explains why space is far more mysterious than being just a container of things.

Popular Science Articles (1983 – 2007):

These essays were originally published as feature articles in magazines and newspapers between 1984 and 2007 and are a bit out of date by now, so I have updated them as new blog essays to make them more readable and current!

If you are interested in learning more about various aspects of Big Bang theory that have to do with the conditions in the universe just ‘before’ and just after the Big Bang.

1. Beyond the Big Bang (Astronomy, May 1987)
2. The Planck Era (Astronomy, March 1984)

If you want to learn more about how physicists and astronomers are beginning to view the concept of a vacuum

1. The Decay of the False Vacuum (Astronomy, November 1983)
2. Does Space Have More Than 3 Dimensions?( Astronomy, November 1984)
3. Space-Time : The Final Frontier ( Sky and Telescope, February 1996)
4. What if String Theory is Wrong (Astronomy, February 2007)

If you want to learn more about the so-called cosmological constant introduced originally by Albert Einstein as a ‘fudge factor’ to make the universe non- expanding.

The Cosmological Constant : Einstein’s Fudge Factor (Sky and Telescope, April 1991)

Here are two essays about what it means for the universe to expand, and how many educators and text book authors continue to get the description of it wrong

1. The Cosmological Redshift Explained (Sky and Telescope, February 1993)
2. The Big Bang was NOT a Fireworks Display!! (Washington Post newspaper, ‘Horizon’ Section, May 14, 1997)

FAQs

• Where in the universe did the Big Bang happen?
• What facts disprove the Big Bang theory?
• How can an infinite universe have a beginning in time?
• What exactly is a sub-atomic particles structure like?
• Is the empty space inside particles the same kind as there is inside atoms?
• Do other dimensions exist?
• Does the physical vacuum produce a pressure that can be measured?
• What prevents densities higher than the Planck Limit from happening?
• How much of a charge excess would be needed in the universe to produce detectable non-gravitational motions?
• Does anyone really understand general relativity well enough to have an intuitive grasp of the universe?
• How do you really know that general relativity stops working inside black holes?
• Can you go faster than the speed of light by altering space in some way?
• What are the ’10 dimensions’ that physicists are always talking about?
• What is the simplest evidence that there are more than 4 dimensions?
• Is there a ‘smallest possible size’ to space beyond which it cannot be further divided?
• How do you reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity?
• Are there alternatives to General Relativity?